


you say you cut your bangs, i'm calling your bluff

by maggiesbombshell



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Catra (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Not really angsty, POV Catra (She-Ra), Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, adora is a supportive gf, but so is catra, it's about the symbolism of hair cuts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25594861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggiesbombshell/pseuds/maggiesbombshell
Summary: Catra's ear tufts begin to grow back and she kinda has a crisis because of it.Or, as Catra's hair grows and changes, so does Catra. Adora as well.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 289





	you say you cut your bangs, i'm calling your bluff

_“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”_

  * _Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice_



  
  
  


They’ve done this nearly every night since they were children. Adora would ask Catra random questions as they laid facing each other on Adora’s bunk. She’d always get like this at night, all wide-eyed and hyper talking about their future as force captains leading the Horde. Every other cadet would be dog tired after their day long training sessions but not Adora. It seemed like they just gave her even more energy.

_“You think we’ll get a larger variety of ration bars to choose from when we’re promoted?”_

_Catra almost tells her about the stash of food she and Lonnie found that_ isn’t _ration bars last week but she knows that’ll just further Adora’s curiosity. She drags her hands down her face and groans._

_Adora ignores Catra’s clear annoyance and gasps. “Do you think we’ll get new staffs?”_

_Catra hits her with her pillow. “We won’t be able to find out any of these things if we don’t go to sleep.”_

_Adora rolls her eyes. “Okay fine. But one more question.”_

_“Adora.”_

_Adora pouts and moves closer to Catra. She can feel Adora’s body heat radiating off of her. Catra’s face heats up and she avoids eye contact with the girl. “Fine. But this is the_ last _one.” She shoves Adora away from her in an attempt to show that she was annoyed with the girl’s antics but it comes off more like a playful push._

_Adora continues and Catra just listens with a small smile on her face. She adds on to a few things Adora says about things she noticed other force captains do and her smile grows._

_She’d never admit it but seeing this side of Adora who’s normally so focused throughout the day because of extended training is refreshing. She likes Adora’s smile and Catra likes to think that she has a certain smile reserved for her even though it’s highly unlikely. Maybe Catra just likes Adora._

  
  


____________________________________________________________

  
  


Adora’s elbow is propped up on her pillow, her hand holding her head up. Her hair is free of her ponytail for once and Catra thinks this is the most relaxed she’s ever seen her in her life. “So what’d you think of the party?” 

She’d attended a party in a small village earlier with Adora, Bow, and Glimmer. She insisted on staying back at the castle but Adora pleaded with her and told her how long she’d been wanting to bring Catra to one and Catra gave in. 

“It was nice.”

Adora’s eyes grow to the size of saucers. “ _Just_ nice? After I went to my first one I could literally make a list about everything I experienced and put them into three separate categories.”

Catra huffs. “Well you also weren’t really a part of the evil Horde that destroyed those villages every other week.” She mumbles.

Adora frowns and Catra immediately regrets what she said. 

Over the past few months Catra had figured out that making terrible life choices adds not only guilt to your psyche but a new type of self loathing, one different than what she’d already been dealing with. The kind that plagues your mind and convinces you that you don’t deserve anything good in life.

Catra sighs. “Sorry. Sometimes it just feels like...like I’ve done so much and it’s overwhelming because how am I supposed to make up for it all? And sometimes it’s not even things I’m directly responsible for. It could be something Hordak did before I even became a force captain but I’d feel awful because I chose to work under him after all of that.” She didn’t like telling Adora these types of things. Not only because being open is still a struggle for her but because she doesn’t want to burden her when she knows Adora has her own heap of problems to worry about. But at the same time she knows it’s important for Adora to share her problems with Catra and more importantly she _wants_ Adora to share them so she doesn’t feel the need to go through it all alone. So why shouldn’t it be the same for herself?

Adora rubs Catra’s hand with her own free hand before squeezing it. “Hey, I’m glad you told me. It’s good that you’re trying to make up for everything and care so much about it. Besides, I know you’ll figure it all out somehow because you’re one of the most determined people I know, and I’m proud of you.”

Adora’s looking at her with the softest smile on her face and Catra can’t help but smile back. “Can we sleep now?”

Adora yawns. “Yeah but c’mere.”

Catra hardly manages to scoot over before Adora pulls her closer by grabbing her waist. “You’re so stupid”, she says through a small fit of giggles.

Adora has her arm draped across Catra’s shoulder, Catra’s head is underneath Adora’s chin. Her legs are curled up, closer to her chest but not together as they’re tangled with Adora’s legs, which are also curled up. (A habit she’d learned when they were cadets and Catra would sleep at the end of her bunk.) Catra’s tail curls around Adora’s calf.

Adora’s fingers comb through Catra’s hair. It’d grown about an inch and a half. She begins to purr but isn’t even embarrassed by it as she wholeheartedly believes that if Adora were part Magicat she’d be purring too. 

Suddenly Adora’s fingers stop behind her ear and Catra almost whines as the gesture was helping her drift off to sleep.

“Your tufts are growing back.”

It’s Catra’s turn to go saucer eyed. “Mhm.”

She rubs at short, fine hairs behind her ear and Catra shivers. “Why’d you decide to cut them off anyway?”

Adora has asked this question before but she was able to get out of answering as duty called for the both of them. It’s the one thing Catra _really_ isn’t able to talk about. She obviously still isn’t the best at being open and vulnerable after habitually bottling nearly everything up for the first eighteen years of her life, but despite everything she’d like to say she’s getting better at it. But the event that took place causing Catra to cut the hair off led her to the absolute _worst_ place she’d been in mentally and caused her to spiral, and make decisions she’s sure she’s gonna regret for the rest of her life. 

Adora knows bits and pieces of what happened with Shadow Weaver, how she’d manipulated Catra into letting her escape and that’s how she’d ended up at Brightmoon. She knows that whatever happened hugely affected her by an offhand comment Scorpia had made. But she still doesn’t know _exactly_ what happened. She also isn’t exactly ready to tell her exactly what happened.

Catra’s thought process is cut off by Adora yawning. She lifts her head to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “Sleep.”

Adora moves her hand back to where it was originally. “Mkay.”

  
  


___________________________________________________________

Adora doesn’t ask again the next morning so Catra assumes she forgot. 

  
  


Catra ignores short hair behind her ears for a few weeks as the hair is too short to cut off without scissors. She tries to avoid touching the hair as well and manages pretty well.

Or at least until the Sorcerers Guild visited Brightmoon. 

She tries to stay in her bedroom as much as possible. There’s magical illusions everywhere and the smell reminds her of Shadow Weaver and the countless amount of times she used not only the black garnet on her, but sorcery when she didn’t have connection to the garnet.

Her hands occupy her tufts for the majority of the day. After pacing around her and Adora’s bedroom for a good twenty minutes Catra decides to take action in order to tamper down her feelings of helplessness.

She takes a pair of scissors from Glimmer’s office and chops the hair off in th bathroom. But just like knowing the old sorcerer is dead wasn’t enough to calm her anxiety, cutting off the pieces of hair she was able to reach with scissors isn’t enough either.

Catra can still feel fine patches of hair behind her ears and it’s enough to keep that day in Shadow Weaver’s cell on her mind as well as everything that happened afterward. 

She opens the scissors as wide as they can go and grabs a hold of one of the blades, pressing the other one to the thin hairs in a shaving motion.

The door opens and Catra jumps, dropping the scissors on her foot. 

“Hey Catra, have you- sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” Adora says.

Catra lets out a shaky exhale and picks the metal scissors up off of the floor. “It’s fine. Do you know if there’s a razor anywhere I can use?”

“I could ask around. But why?”

“Fashion purposes.” Catra deadpans. “I wanna cut my hair.”

“Well you could just have one of the stylists do it.”

“Not that kind of hair, my ear tufts. And I’d rather do it myself.”

Adora’s eyebrows raise at the mention of her tufts. “Sure but...can I ask why? I know things have changed and all but you liked them growing up.”

Catra was never really for or against the pieces of hair but she remembers Adora calling them pretty when they were children and braiding them which plays a large role in why she let them grow so long in the first place. And at another point in time she liked the sense of individuality that came with the hair. But just like the hair growing from her head that was taken from her and used against her. 

The memory of Shadow Weaver’s hands rubbing at her tufts slowly brings tears to her eyes.

“Catra?”

Catra meets Adora’s eyes, smiling sadly. “Would you believe it if I said fashion purposes again?”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Adora asks in a voice so soft and sweet that it throws Catra for a loop.

She sighs. “Yeah.”

  
  
  


Catra sits on her shared bed with Adora, Adora’s hands softly holding hers the way they did on Mara’s ship and tells her everything. She tells her how she took Shadow Weaver out and how she was locked in a cell. She tells her how she visited their late mentor and Catra’s last conversation with her in the cell. Catra even tells her how finding out Shadow Weaver abandoning her to die played a role in her opening the portal.

Catra sighs, exhausted from retelling the events. “And after the portal I still felt so _weak_ and out of control of my own life so I decided I’d regain that strength and control by relying only on myself and erasing any part of myself that could be used against me. My ear tufts being a part of that.”

“Catra, I’m _so_ sorry that all of this happened I-”

“You don’t need to apologize. It was all her, not you.”

Adora squeezes her hand. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Go for it.”

“Did you avoid the guild today because they reminded you of her?”

Catra’s eyes drop. “Yeah.”

Adora frowns. “I wish you told me. You didn’t have to sit up here all day alone y’know.”

“I know but I noticed how much you liked their magic and all the illusions and tricks and I didn’t want to take that joy away from you.”

“You’re more important to me than a few dumb magic tricks though. You know that right?”

Catra nods hesitantly. 

“And I know that it takes some getting used to- in fact, I don’t think I’ve fully gotten used to it yet- but you can be open and share how you feel here without getting punished for it. And doing that doesn’t make you weak either. It makes you even stronger and...you’re one of the strongest people I know.”

Catra feels such an overwhelming amount of love she doesn’t know what to say. She pauses to think and decides to keep it simple. “I love you.”

Adora smiles at her. (The smile reserved especially for her that Adora’s been giving her for years that Catra always thought she was reading too much into.) “I love you too.”

They’re both silent for a moment, Adora’s fingers idly stroking Catra’s knuckles.

Catra breaks the silence. “Have you been meditating with Perfuma too?”  
  


Adora laughs. “Yeah, I have actually.”

  
  


____________________________________________________________

Two months pass and she still hasn’t cut the tufts of hair off.

Her hair stops right above her chin and the tufts are halfway grown out. She stares at her reflection in one of Brightmoon’s bathroom mirrors, (or rather her and Adora’s bathroom) twirling the light piece of hair around her fingers. A white robe is also wrapped around her as she just got out of the shower.

The bathroom’s door handle twists and Adora enters. “Catra...I thought you were finished!” 

Catra lifts an eyebrow. “I would’ve come to bed. Which is where _you_ are supposed to be.”

Adora’s hair is still damp from her shower before Catra’s, her hair out of it’s ponytail for once. She sighs, her body practically deflating. “I just wanted a hair tie.”

Adora challenged Catra to a race across one of Brightmoon’s long gardens last week as she’d been working on her speed at the gym with Huntara. She lost, and then they raced again with Adora in She-ra form and Adora lost again. Adora had to do whatever Catra said and Catra’s choice was that Adora couldn’t wear her hair in a ponytail for a month. She decided it was too harsh when Adora looked visibly sad and changed the deal to Adora not being able to wear it up at night.

Catra folds her arms, amused at the situation. “So you were gonna cheat your way out of this despite the entire thing being your idea?”

“Do you know how many times I’ve woken up with hair in my mouth this week? And you weren’t supposed to find out about it, I was gonna wake up early and take the hair tie out.”

“How conniving of you, Adora. I’ve been rubbing off on you haven’t I?”

Adora groans and Catra turns back toward the mirror.

“Speaking of hair…” Adora walks behind Catra and wraps her arms around her waist. 

Catra’s own hand finds itself on top of Adora’s, another holding onto her arm, stroking the blonde’s wrist.

“You letting your tufts grow out?” Adora’s chin rests on top of her shoulder.

Catra sighs. “I don’t know actually.” It’s a weird answer for her. For the longest time Catra knew exactly what she was going to do and when she was going to do it and now she’s just going with the flow of things. She’s starting to think that her hair isn’t the issue. Maybe it never was.

Adora presses a kiss on her cheek. “Just remember that-”

“That I’m safe here and that’s there’s no reason to be afraid yeah, yeah.”

“And that she’s gone.” Adora adds.

Catra’s throat feels dry for some reason. “Yeah.”

Adora pulls her arms away and Catra grows cold. “I’m heading off to bed...without a hair tie.”

“You’ll thank me when we’re old. And by old I mean mid-thirties.”

“Aww,” Adora puts her hand over her heart. “You wanna be with me in our mid-thirties?”

It’s Catra’s turn to groan. “Shut up.”  
  


“Try to come to bed before I’m asleep for once. I love you.”

An overwhelming amount of warmth fills Catra’s chest again. “I love you too.”

  
  


____________________________________________________________

Another month passes and Catra’s hair stops at the top of her chin. It’s starting to get thick again as well as harder to care for but it’s not like she ever cared much about brushing her hair anyway.

Her ear tufts are growing at a rapid pace, getting closer and closer to outgrowing her hair length everyday. It doesn’t help that the length itself is already kind of awkward. It’s still too short to be put into a presentable ponytail nor do much else with it.

Plus, Catra no longer has her old mask so her hair consistently gets into her face. She was desperate to the point where she let Adora put pieces of her hair into a poof like hers.

(Bow and Glimmer thought it was cute. She hated it.)

She cuts the tufts off one afternoon and she doesn’t think about the day in Shadow Weaver’s cell while doing it either.

Later on that day she’s sitting in bed with Adora, a sparkly hair clip gifted from Sparkles pinning her bangs back. 

(Catra hates sparkly things, _obviously,_ but _Adora_ found it cute so she kept the clip in.)

They’re working on maps for Bow as he’s going on a trip with his dad’s soon. Adora’s taken up cartography as a hobby and it’s certainly not the most interesting thing to Catra it’s the first time she’s been able to get time with her alone today so it’ll do.

Adora traces a trail with a fine-tipped marker before smiling and looking up at Catra. “You think Bow will like it if I- “ She blinks a few times, both eyebrows raised. “You cut them.”

Catra rubs the back of her neck sheepishly. She hopes she didn’t give the people in Brightmoon _another_ reason to look at her weirdly. “Does it look bad?”

Adora quickly shakes her head. “I think you look amazing no matter what.”

Catra’s still taken aback from the compliment despite the fact that they’ve been dating for several months now. (She secretly hopes she’ll always feel breathless when Adora says things like that.)

“But…” She trails off.

Catra knows exactly what she’s thinking about. “I didn’t do it because of her, I did it for me.” 

A huge grin slowly grows on Adora’s face. “I’m proud of you.”

Catra can’t help but smile back. “I’m proud of you too y’know.”

“For…”

“For everything. An example being right now, how you’re casually drawing maps with me for Bow and his dad’s instead of taking on a bunch of work to make yourself useful.”

Adora twirls a pen with her fingers. “I don’t really see how people should praise you for _not_ doing work.”  
  


“Well I am,” Catra throws a pen cap at her nose. “Deal with it. And it’s important that you give yourself a break, Adora. You don’t have to help with _everything_ . People will understand and they’ll still want you around because they like _you_ not what you can do for them.”

Adora’s staring at the map in front of her but somehow Catra has a feeling she’s on the verge of crying. She sniffles before looking back up at Catra. “Well do _you_ know that I love you like...a lot.”

“No, I didn’t actually.”

Adora laughs.

“I love you too, Adora.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a part of a she-ra fluff bang that i really enjoyed partcipating in! i hope you all enjoyed this as well <333
> 
> yell at me abt she ra!!
> 
> tumblr: catrasbastard  
> twitter: catrazulas
> 
> amazing art of this fic from my collab partner! https://shuckel.tumblr.com/post/625006225170530304


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